The Customer Experience (PART 5)

The Customer Experience: How To Wow Your Customers (PART 5)

TRANSCRIPT: Let’s jump into part three, how to prevent customer service issues before they ever even happen? Preventing customer issues before they ever even happen, this is what great customer service is, and we are going to teach it to you with five simple lessons. We are going to going through all five in a second, but really we are going to treat people like volunteers and orphans. Now I’ll get to what that means.

We want to always expect our customers, we want to focus on convenience, making things convenient whenever they deal with us. We want to manage their expectations and we want to have a goal of customers for life. When I talk about that people are volunteers and orphans, I want you to treat everyone who works at your company like a volunteer, every employee, every manager because they are a volunteer.

See, you can buy their backs but they volunteer their heart and they volunteer their minds, and you have to understand that. If you want the best work out of them, if you want them to really execute all the time, and if you really want them to treat your customers well, then you need to treat them like they are a volunteer. I want to treat every customer as if they were a needy orphan because if you can do that you will win every time.

Let me make sure you understand exactly what this means. This is your approach every day. This is how I want you to approach every day, not just on a Christmas time, every single day. Imagine that your only business that this is what your business is for, your only business is handing out toys at Christmas to orphan children. That’s your only business. Your employees and managers are all volunteers and your customers are those little urchins, and you are playing Santa, how would you behave? How would you behave if that was your only business? What would you do as Santa?

See, everything you did as Santa would be meant to please the orphans. Wouldn’t it, right? Would there be any reason to scold an orphan? Never. Would there any reason to ever treat an orphan badly? No. Would there be any reason to ever teach an orphan a lesson? See, think about that. There is never a reason to scold our customer, there is never a reason to treat a customer badly, and there is never a reason to teach a customer a lesson. That’s not our job.

What about scolding a volunteer? You are Santa, would there be any reason to scold a volunteer? Actually there would, right, if they were somehow rude to an orphan. That’s it. That would be about the only reason to ever scold them. See, so it’s the same thing in your business. Everything you do should be weighed against pleasing the customers, but pleasing all customers, not throwing away your business trying to please one.

Everyone’s job is to make them feel welcome because little things matter to orphans and little things matter to customers, because of that you don’t need to blow them away. Like Chick-fil-A it’s just simplicity, its manners, its smile and its basic good service. That’s all you need to please your orphans, that’s all you need to please your customers.

Think about the Apple Store, think about orphans at the Apple Store. See, when you walk in, you are treated like an orphan, aren’t you? When you are a buyer, right? Someone asked you, “Do you know where you are headed?” If you know where you are headed, you want to do what you want to do, they’ll leave you alone; but if you need help, you get a good experience because a knowledgeable product specialist speaks at your level.

See, they’re not talking up here, they are all tech heads there. You can come in not knowing anything about the iPhone and someone will talk to you on your level. You could be an 80-year-old grandmother and they will sell you the iPhone, the iPhone you need, but they’ll speak to you at your level, but I get it, you are saying, “Now Steve, that’s the Apple Store. You know what, without cool fanboy products, those stores would fail.”

All right, let’s just talk about your business then. You already have customers coming in, don’t you? Are they being greeted and treated like a valued human? I mean, like an orphan, right. Are they given a chance for help and then left alone if they choose? Are they working with the experts in your business who were talking to them on their level? By the way, not everybody treats the customers at the Apple Store like orphans.

If you’ve ever needed help at the Genius Car, if you have something that needs repair, unfortunately the front of the store does a great job at treating you like an orphan. When you get to the back of the store where the Genius Car is, it’s like a service department in a car dealership. They had some sort of customer service one-on-one training and they use a lot of over-explanation and corporate speak, it’s just odd. It really is like fingers on a chalkboard trying to deal with the people in the back of the store. You wouldn’t talk to an orphan that way, so you shouldn’t be talking to your customers that way.

How do you ensure that your customers get treated like orphans all the time? You treat your employees like volunteers. See, remember, crap rolls downhill. How you treat your team directly affects how they treat their team, etc., all the way down to the customer. You are volunteers. You know what, think about that. You are volunteers. For some of you, you’re just one or two steps from the customer, and that’s great. For others, you need to ensure that frontline managers because you are often in a corporate office somewhere, you need to ensure that those frontline managers are treating your frontline employees with respect and kindness, just like volunteers.